Devices are known as cardiotomy reservoirs that are designed to receive blood collected in the operating field during surgery in order to filter it and return it to the patient after appropriate treatments.
The blood that reaches the cardiotomy reservoir from the operating field may contain fats particularly derived from cuts at the sternum and at the mammary region, which can cause microemboli, with dangerous consequences, such as for example occlusion of brain arteries.
Therefore, these fats must be eliminated from the blood before reinfusion to the patient, and in the background art this is done by means of a layer of non-woven fabric inserted within the filtering mass, which however operates with rather limited effectiveness.
Besides to what is described above, it should be noted that there is the need to control the quantity of leukocytes in the blood, and for this purpose the background art uses a particular filtering material, known as leukocyte filter, which is inserted in a specifically dedicated apparatus that is inserted in the line along which the blood flows.